Bob Neill: One of the most salutary but, in retrospect, useful put-downs I ever had when I was a young barrister came when I perhaps overindulged in hyperbole in advancing arguments to the Court of Appeal and Lord Justice Cumming-Bruce said to me, “There’s no jury here, Mr Neill, you can cut out the hyperbole and stick to the arguments.” He was right and perhaps it is not a bad thing to try to do in the Committee on the Bill, as there has been a deal of hyperbole surrounding its passage, coming from those in all parts of the House. We might be better off cutting it out a little and getting back to the nuts and bolts of what we are discussing, because a lot of the Bill is perfectly reasonable and necessary. It is not a necessity I particularly like, because I wish we were not leaving some of the arrangements we currently share, but it has to happen as we exit the transition period. The real difficulty comes from the issues in part 5, which we have discussed on a number of occasions, so let me just return to them.
I listened with care to the Minister, and I do not doubt his sincerity and good intentions in this regard. He must have thought it a pretty rum do when he was a trade Minister and he found himself in the middle of a lawyers’ argument, but that has never stopped the lawyers making that case. I recognise that the Government have endeavoured to shift to try to make clear some of their intentions in relation to the difficult and sensitive matters that part 5 threw up. I will not pretend that we should have started from here; it might have been better to have contemplated the idea of some emergency legislation should we be confronted by what, I am glad to say, the Minister says is an unlikely eventuality, as this is what we all want to avoid if at all possible. I can see arguments the other way as well, so I welcome the constructive approach the Government have adopted towards myself and a number of my hon. Friends who had significant reservations with the Bill, as tabled, to try to make it clear that it is not the Government’s intention to act in a way that would undermine our reputation as a nation and jurisdiction that supports and upholds our obligations in international as well as domestic law.

Bob Neill: It is certainly fair to say that it would have been better to have had the caveats that the Government have now put into the Bill to begin with, and I am grateful to Ministers for having worked in the way in which they have to achieve that. It would be absurd to pretend that there has not been real concern expressed by people whom we respect and ought to be able to deal with as allies and counterparties going forward. There is a way to ensure that that concern is alleviated and lasting harm is not done, and I am sure that the Government are committed to trying to do that.
Superficially, new clause 1 is attractive, but I am inclined to give the Government the benefit of the doubt that it is not necessary for the reasons that they have set out. I was going to press the Minister, but he has anticipated much of what I have to say. I am sure that he will confirm again, in winding up, that we are committed to ensuring that part 5 is not used to undermine the legally binding commitments and until such time as it is necessary to act to protect a significant national interest of the UK in relation to the integrity of the Union, as a result of bad faith by our EU counterpart, which—please, God—I hope never arises, and that we will do so without seeking to oust the legal obligations that we entered into in relation to the safeguarding provisions and the arbitral arrangements under article 167.
Given that, we can make a good case for saying that new clause 1 is not necessary and that the Government’s own intention will deal with that, but I urge the Government, as a friend, to ensure that they reinforce those points very strongly as we go forward, because to persuade the Upper House will be an important task. Continuing evidence of good faith and a willingness perhaps to look at some of the wording would be helpful to the Government.
I have sympathy for new clause 8. My right hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh) and I were reminiscing that we were the two youngest members of the Conservative group of the Greater London Council. We were actually abolished by Mrs Thatcher, by Act of Parliament, but that does not seem to have entirely destroyed our careers or done us lasting harm. I very much take on board my right hon. Friend’s points about the value of the Vienna convention. He and I served on the Council of Europe together, and that convention—again, the UK contributed significantly to it over the years—may benefit us a good deal going forward. Even if it is not necessary to take the wording of new clause 8 into the Bill, the sentiment behind it is useful, and I hope the Government will bear in mind the arguments my right hon. Friend will advance later in the debate, because they may well be useful elsewhere.
The convention is also important because the reality is that, if we do get into disputes over the legal interpretation of the agreement, those disputes are likely to engage the interpretation not of European law—which is a matter of concern to some of my hon. Friends, to a remarkable degree—but of treaty law, for which the convention is the primary document. My right hon. Friend makes an important point by raising the significance of the convention in his new clause.
The other matter I want to turn to at this stage relates to amendments 13 to 15, which I probed the Minister on a little earlier. I welcome the recognition that we are committed to ensuring that legislation, including secondary legislation, is compatible with our obligations under the European convention. I do not find it offensive that judicial review of some of these matters is limited to 21 days. Provided that there is judicial review—and there is—I think that that is proportionate, given that it is highly likely that the issues that give rise to a judicial review will have been so publicised and so ventilated that there should be no great burden on a potential litigator in bringing their case within that time.
However, I urge the Minister to reflect further on the best way to deal with the question of incompatibility. The fact that we are committed to compatibility is important. It could be argued that removing a remedy other than a declaration of incompatibility significantly weakens the level of redress open to an aggrieved person. One of the reasons we brought convention law into domestic law through the Human Rights Act was to ensure that someone did not have to go to the Strasbourg Court to get a remedy for their convention rights and that there was a greater range of remedies available, such as monetary payments—damages, in effect—and other things. It would help the Government if the Minister could give some greater justification for their stance when he winds up.
My final point is that we need to think carefully about the scrutiny of the secondary legislation involved. If we provide that certain aspects of secondary legislation should be treated as primary legislation, it is all the more important that they have the same parliamentary scrutiny as we would expect for primary legislation. We should perhaps look at whether even the affirmative resolution procedure proposed for these matters will provide sufficient scrutiny to ensure that our obligations are well discharged in relation to the albeit limited numbers of regulations that might—or, hopefully, might not—be required.
With those caveats, I hope the Government will take the thoughts I have set out on board in a constructive spirit to try to improve the Bill further and to assist its passage not just through this House but elsewhere. I also hope that part 5 of the Bill never has to see the light of day in practice and that we get an agreement in the negotiations, which would be much the best outcome. Every lawyer prefers that their client should settle rather than go to court, despite foul rumours spread by others to the contrary.